It is bittersweet to type these words: After 36 years and three months of service, I am now the retired film critic of the Toronto Sun and the former Sun Media chain across Canada.

Retirement is bitter because this is an ending — specifically to a sometimes frenzied, often frustrating but always exhilarating part of my life. My Sun career started with a one-on-one interview with singer-actress Bette Midler at the height of her own flamboyant career; we both giggled as she slung around brazen bon mots about her music documentary, Divine Madness! My final face-to-face, one-on-one interview for the Sun came in December in New York. I talked to Martin Scorsese, the legendary American filmmaker. He confessed that he, too, now has his career end in sight as he contemplated his new religious epic, Silence.

Retirement is sweet because it is a beginning – specifically to what … I confess I do not yet know. But it will be something new and I hope it will be as interesting and rewarding and bright as my time in the Sun. Besides jotting down sightings in my bird watching pursuits (yes indeed, I am a Bird Geek), I trust I will write something challenging from time to time. Perhaps even about cinema.

I exit with an enduring love for “the little paper that grew,” the folksy moniker for the Toronto Sun in its early days. The Sun was founded in 1971, just after I started working for one of its Toronto competitors.

I joined the upstart tabloid in September of 1980 thanks to the interventions of three men: the late Jim Rennie (an irascible legend from The Toronto Star), the late Doug Creighton (the beloved co-founder of the Toronto Sun) and George Anthony (still a dear friend and the pioneer of entertainment coverage at the Sun).

One of the hallmarks of the Sun of that era was how it embraced a diversity of opinion, especially in politics. One caveat: You could find yourself skewered by another writer. Editorial writer Barbara Amiel (aka Baroness Black of Crossharbour) once referred to me in a column as “the resident pinko film critic of the Toronto Sun.” Being a left-leaning weirdo who was never censored in this right-wing publication, I took that as an extraordinary compliment.

I leave the still feisty if beleaguered newspaper with deep respect for a handful of entertainment editors who guided me with wisdom and friendship: Anthony in his return engagement at the Sun, wordsmith Kathy Brooks, the fun-tastic John Kryk/Bill Pierce team and, most recently, fellow film enthusiast Mark Daniell. Ditto for the respect, gratitude and love I hold for my many colleagues in entertainment over the years. I especially want to send out support for Liz Braun, Bill Harris, Jim Slotek and Jane Stevenson, who soldier on at the Sun as the mainstream media undergoes a cataclysmic upheaval worldwide. Journalism will never be the same again.

This upheaval is painful to behold – particularly in an era when fake news sites can elect a bombastic president of the United States or push psychotics to commit mass murder.

In a less terrifying way, changes in the role and influence of mainstream media are also having a profound effect on popular culture. And, of course, in how my own area of expertise in cinema is reported upon and consumed by the public.

The news is not good. Fewer films are being “discovered” and/or nourished in mainstream media because there are fewer critic/reporters to do so and less space (even in the digital realm) to do the reporting or provide critical analysis. Meanwhile, there is only so much any one critic can say about the next expansion of the Marvel or DC cinematic universes, even if fans want to read all about it.

So I look back on the past 36 years and rejoice that the Toronto Sun gave me the opportunity to do some discovering myself, whether it was championing the early work of Toronto filmmakers such as Atom Egoyan, Bruce McDonald, Sarah Polley and Patricia Rozema or being part of the first giddy audience ever to see Steven Spielberg’s E.T. — The Extra-Terrestrial. That screening was at 8:30 in the morning at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, one of 31 trips I took to Cannes.

By the same token, it has been as much of a blast to talk to sit down with Canadian acting legends from Gordon Pinsent to Donald Sutherland as it has to interview Hollywood stars. Even ones who were just starting out. I was among the first critics/reporters to ever talk to people such as Robin Williams, Tom Cruise, Russell Crowe and Brad Pitt before they were famous.

Yes, I know I have been privileged. And it is an honour to say I have been the film critic of the Toronto Sun/Sun Media for the past 36 years and three months.

A LIFETIME OF ENCOUNTERS

Interviews are part of the game for film critics. Here are highlights from 36 years at The Toronto Sun:

Bette Midler: First Sun interview and tons o’ fun in 1980.

Robert De Niro: At my first Oscars, I feel a nudge. It is Robert De Niro, Oscar in hand for Raging Bull and feeling lost. We chat about his bromance with Jerry Lewis, his future co-star in The King of Comedy.

Daniel Radcliffe/Emma Watson/Rupert Grint: In the midst of the Harry Potter phenomenon, I sit down with all three on the Deathly Hallows sets in England.

Lillian Gish: The silent film superstar is still gorgeous late in life, with Gish yearning for a return to silents because they are universal.

Tom Cruise: Before stardom, on the set of the silly Losin’ It, Cruise is all grin, grit and ambition — and he laughs about it now.

James Stewart: Because he is a childhood favourite, I am mesmerized phoning him to discuss Hitchcock and Vertigo.

George Burns: He lives to 100. I meet him at 85. He remembers everything, even comedy shows he gave in Toronto in the 1930s.

Julie Andrews: With her vocal chord issue, she is moved when I suggest that “her films now sing for her.”

Roger Moore: Sweet-tempered, he is one of five James Bonds I encounter, in his case on the set of Octopussy.